Anora
Academy Award × 5
Rent/Purchase
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
What critics thought
Sean Baker's Palme d'Or winner is embraced by critics as a formally inventive, class-conscious screwball tragedy anchored by Mikey Madison's ferocious lead performance, though a minority found the film overlong and its tonal shifts uneven. Off-screen, debate has been sharper: sex workers and commentators remain genuinely split over whether Anora humanizes the profession or recycles the 'traumatised sex worker in need of saving' trope, and the film's warm reception in Russia has complicated its cultural politics in ways critics have only begun to untangle.
“plays like a wild dream—first joyous, then catastrophic, and always fiercely unpredictable”
Justin Chang·The New Yorker
“a darkness thrums under the surface of all this flirting and bickering. Ani is forever yanked this way and that, degraded and disregarded”
Richard Lawson·Vanity Fair
“an overlong runtime, underwritten characters and some uneasy tonal wobbles dampen the film's punchy humour and propulsive energy”
Stephen Dalton·The Film Verdict
“the film narratively builds upon and follows the social imaginaries of sex workers as subhuman projections for other people's fantasies”
Ayanna Dozier·Ultra Dogme
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Cast & Crew
DirectorSean Baker
StarringMikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan
Anora
Academy Award × 5
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
What critics thought
Sean Baker's Palme d'Or winner is embraced by critics as a formally inventive, class-conscious screwball tragedy anchored by Mikey Madison's ferocious lead performance, though a minority found the film overlong and its tonal shifts uneven. Off-screen, debate has been sharper: sex workers and commentators remain genuinely split over whether Anora humanizes the profession or recycles the 'traumatised sex worker in need of saving' trope, and the film's warm reception in Russia has complicated its cultural politics in ways critics have only begun to untangle.
“plays like a wild dream—first joyous, then catastrophic, and always fiercely unpredictable”
Justin Chang·The New Yorker
“a darkness thrums under the surface of all this flirting and bickering. Ani is forever yanked this way and that, degraded and disregarded”
Richard Lawson·Vanity Fair
“an overlong runtime, underwritten characters and some uneasy tonal wobbles dampen the film's punchy humour and propulsive energy”
Stephen Dalton·The Film Verdict
“the film narratively builds upon and follows the social imaginaries of sex workers as subhuman projections for other people's fantasies”
Ayanna Dozier·Ultra Dogme
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Cast & Crew
DirectorSean Baker
StarringMikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan
Rent/Purchase